Britain Awards $2.3 Billion To Secure ‘New Style of IT’ And Communication Systems

Britain has awarded two contracts worth $2.3 billion to provide a secure ‘New Style of IT’ (NSoIT) and communication systems.

The contracts were awarded to the ATLAS Consortium, a collaborative team led by HP and including Fujitsu, Airbus Defense and Space and CGI to provide a secure New Style of IT (NSoIT) to the majority of Defense users in offices, headquarters and deployed bases by September 2016, the MoD said in a statement Monday.

This New Style of IT is a contract worth £933 million (US $1.4 billion) and is a renegotiation of the original extension of the Defense Information Infrastructure (DII) contract.

Fujitsu has been awarded a contract worth in excess of £550 million (US $857 million) to provide our core global connectivity services for the next five years. A further announcement will follow on the award of a contract for voice, video and mobile phone elements which will complement the other capabilities being delivered and allow our military and civilian users to exploit them to their fullest potential.

The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) believes that the move will bring savings of over £1billion (US $1.6 billion) over 10 years. It plans to reinvest the money saved into defense procurement.

The new contracts transform the delivery of information and communication technology across Defense, providing a new IT system fully exploiting the power of cloud computing, along with Microsoft Office 365 software, and securely delivering greater agility and mobility to our service personnel wherever they may be. This move is a significant upgrade of current capability and will put Defense on the front foot with its industry partners to deal with global threats to national security.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said, “We must keep pace with those who pose a threat to UK security, whether overt or cyber-based. The new contracts will enhance our fighting capability and make us more efficient in our work.”

Alongside this enhanced capability we have managed to secure huge savings of £1bn over ten years. All of this money will be reinvested back into Defense, ultimately helping keep Britain safe.

The new contracts have been split into two projects: New Style of IT (NSoIT); and Global Connectivity. The project known as NSoIT was established to renegotiate the continuation of our secure IT systems, bringing in huge savings from the original contract whilst also delivering significantly improved and new capability.

The project known as Global Connectivity was established to ensure best continuation of ICT services after the Defence Fixed Telecommunications Service (DFTS) contract ends in July 2016. An announcement on Integrated User Services that underpins both NSoIT and Global Connectivity will be made in due course.